Japan Seems Pleased with Signs of Activist US Economic Policy A NEW MODEL?

Article excerpt

SMILES of self-satisfaction are spreading among leaders in Tokyo
as they watch President Clinton pursue a Japanese-style industrial
policy for the United States.

But Tokyo officials are more than flattered about this American
imitation of Japan's economic strategy, one in which the Japanese
government has intervened to help key industries become more
competitive in world markets.

Clinton's moves help reassure Japan about its new assertiveness
both in promoting the Japanese model of capitalism as one that is
better than Western models for developing nations and in shaping a
global economic order after the cold war. "It is a mistake to think
that the capitalism of a matured European or American economy is
the only kind of capitalist economy," said Yasuhiro Nakasone, a
former prime minister, at a recent forum.

Japan's postwar economic policies, regarded widely in the West
as mercantile and unfair, have included such practices as
protection of emerging high-tech industries from foreign
competition and government "guidance" in technology research, as
opposed to the laissez-faire faith in free-market forces often
practiced in the West.

Many of Japan's barriers to foreign competition still remain, US
Ambassador Michael Armacost said in a recent speech. The Japanese
"establishment regards these {barriers} not as aberrations from
international norms, but as practices whose appropriateness is
confirmed by Japan's success," he added.

In China, Russia, and other nations, as well as in multilateral
lending banks, Japan has eagerly begun to push its economic
lessons, while criticizing traditional Western advice to developing
nations.

Until now, Japan has been rather modest in presenting its
development policies to the rest of the world, according to Isao
Kubota, a deputy director general in Japan's Finance Ministry.

Last year Japan asked the World Bank to study Japan's post-war
economic policies as well as the success of five other East Asian
nations: South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

East Asia's fast-growing economies "recognize their economic
development has been achieved through a set of shared Asian
values," says Eiichi Furukawa, director of the Japan Center for
International Strategies. Such values, he says, include a strong
work ethic, group loyalty, consensus decisionmaking, esteem for
education, and development of democracy amid political stability. …